Interpreting for the courts?

[matsuki]

I'm sure some of you have come across that article about the Mexican national father who is on trial for kidnapping his daughter. In the discussions I've read, it came up that he grew up in the states since age 9 and his English is far better than his Spanish but his trial has been hit with several delays due to lack of an English/Japanese Interpreter. (he's been using a Spanish/Japanese Interpreter based on his limited Spanish)

Anyhow, I'm sure we're all familiar with how "Fluent" many Japanese "English speakers" who are appointed to important positions often are...it would seem there is a demand for truly bilinguals in this area but has anyone here (or anyone you know) actually made this a career? Any idea what it pays? It would seem like a good alternative to teaching English.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

It's almost all voluntary. There are occasionally honorariums paid.
It can lead to jobs with legal firms, but rarely, because the reality is that foreigners, particularly English-speaking foreigners, simply aren't involved in as many crimes -- or court cases -- as the Japanese media would like to have people believe.
Nonetheless, courts are desperately short of interpreters for many language pairs.

[matsuki]

I know the number of eigo speaking gaijin isn't big but being forced to rely on a volunteer interpreter, if available...wow, that is indeed fucked.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Big problem around the world, apparently. And many volunteer interpreters simply aren't up to scratch.
Happens to Japanese overseas, too, perhaps most notoriously in recent years to the group convicted for drug trafficking in Australia in the '90s. Although circumstantial evidence pointed strongly toward their guilt and they all eventually served out their terms, they maintained their innocence from go to whoa, blaming the incompetence of their Aussie interpreter for statements that worked against them.
I'm supremely confident of my Japanese ability, spoken and written, yet I'd rather not volunteer as a court interpreter simply because misspeaking or misshearing a single phrase could fuck over someone's life. Others aren't perhaps as wary of their shortcomings as I am, so I pray they get it right every time.

[matsuki]

Big problem around the world, apparently. And many volunteer interpreters simply aren't up to scratch.
Happens to Japanese overseas, too, perhaps most notoriously in recent years to the group convicted for drug trafficking in Australia in the '90s. Although circumstantial evidence pointed strongly toward their guilt and they all eventually served out their terms, they maintained their innocence from go to whoa, blaming the incompetence of their Aussie interpreter for statements that worked against them.

LOL, sounds more like typical "blame it on the Gaijin" behavior but who knows.

I'm supremely confident of my Japanese ability, spoken and written, yet I'd rather not volunteer as a court interpreter simply because misspeaking or misshearing a single phrase could fuck over someone's life. Others aren't perhaps as wary of their shortcomings as I am, so I pray they get it right every time.

Same here but a professional interpreter would always ask for clarification if they're not 100% sure about a statement or when interpreting a question.

[Greji]

Same here but a professional interpreter would always ask for clarification if they're not 100% sure about a statement or when interpreting a question.

That is quite true and the good ones do exactly that, but I have seem a lot of cases where it does not happen. I know in the business area, an employee appointed to interpret based his "language" expertise will go to all ends to keep from showing he/she does not understand some point, or concept of the conversation. This sometimes has some very embarassing results. I don't know if it is a Japanese loss of face problem, but I'm sure it must exist in other countries.

[matsuki]

That is quite true and the good ones do exactly that, but I have seem a lot of cases where it does not happen. I know in the business area, an employee appointed to interpret based his "language" expertise will go to all ends to keep from showing he/she does not understand some point, or concept of the conversation. This sometimes has some very embarassing results. I don't know if it is a Japanese loss of face problem, but I'm sure it must exist in other countries.

I've seen that as well. One Japanese American guy I know was working for a printing company here and they were printing English/Japanese Automotive repair manuals for the Toyota Avalon. On one particular manual, there were tons of insane problems with the translation, colors mistranslated, stuff that could cause very big problems. He called the division that supplied them with the source files and instead of thanking him for preventing a disaster, they got angry and told him never to question any of it again. (Don't you just love how so many companies here insist on using "English Speaking" Japanese for English translations?) They printed the mistakes as is.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Same here but a professional interpreter would always ask for clarification if they're not 100% sure about a statement or when interpreting a question.

The problem is a person can be 100% sure of something and still be wrong.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Everyone's right here, but interpreting is not a job that often allows leeway for clarification, which is why I have always tried to avoid it because I have an innate talent for fucking things up out of all proportion.
Japanese and English are not a good pair for either translation or interpretation because the languages are so divergent, which can create severe clusterfucks when subtlety is required.
And the worse thing about working in these two languages is that any Japanese who's been on a two-week homestay in New York or Los Angeles automatically qualifies as having better English than any native English speaker educated in their mother tongue. (And that's not exclusively in Japan, either.)

[matsuki]

Everyone's right here, but interpreting is not a job that often allows leeway for clarification, which is why I have always tried to avoid it because I have an innate talent for fucking things up out of all proportion.
Japanese and English are not a good pair for either translation or interpretation because the languages are so divergent, which can create severe clusterfucks when subtlety is required.

Most definitely...

And the worse thing about working in these two languages is that any Japanese who's been on a two-week homestay in New York or Los Angeles automatically qualifies as having better English than any native English speaker educated in their mother tongue. (And that's not exclusively in Japan, either.)

This is what annoys the hell out of me but they are only hurting themselves...

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

This is what annoys the hell out of me but they are only hurting themselves...

They do a pretty good job of hurting me, too...and, they hurt the overall industry.

[matsuki]

They do a pretty good job of hurting me, too...and, they hurt the overall industry.

Sucks

I always laugh when I meet these people though. Some have never even lived outside Japan and can't speak at all. "Japanese Professionals"